1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a laminated ceramic capacitor, and more specifically to a laminated ceramic capacitor offering improved strength and moisture resistance and being capable of effectively preventing generation of cracks caused by thermal shock.
2. Description of the Related Art
A laminated ceramic capacitor is normally produced through a series of steps, including: a step of preparing a ceramic green sheet; a step of printing a conductive paste onto the ceramic green sheet in a desired pattern to form an internal electrode layer; a step of stacking many of the ceramic green sheets on which an internal electrode layer has been formed on top of one another and pressure-bonding the sheets to produce a laminate block; a step of cutting the produced laminate block to a specified size to produce an unsintered green chip; a step of sintering the green chip to obtain a chip base; a step of applying a conductive paste to both end faces of the chip base and baking the paste to form external electrodes; and a step of plating nickel, tin or other metal onto the external electrodes.
When a laminated ceramic capacitor is produced this way, however, it is difficult to pressure-bond many ceramic green sheets in such a way that each pair of adjacent internal electrodes face each other accurately, and this gives rise to the problem of the capacitor not offering sufficiently high capacity due to inaccurate facing of internal electrodes on the adjacent ceramic green sheets.
Solutions have been proposed to address this problem, such as one described in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2011-23707 (Patent Literature 1) wherein a conductive paste for an internal electrode is printed over the entire surfaces, except for areas near at least one side, of a ceramic green sheet having a rough rectangular shape, to form an internal electrode, and many of these ceramic green sheets having an internal electrode formed on it are stacked on top of one another, after which high pressure is applied to pressure-bond the sheets to produce a laminate block, and the block is cut to a required size, and then a ceramic body that will form a part called a “side margin” is formed, by means of coating, etc., on both side faces of the laminate block where internal electrodes are exposed, to produce a ceramic green chip and this ceramic green chip is put through a binder removal process and then sintered to manufacture a laminated ceramic capacitor.